“Soon all display advertising will be retargeted advertising and the pixel will become even more valuable than the click itself. As larger advertisers continue to buy up ad inventory (and create their own retargeting audiences) those that fail to ‘pixel’ their site visitors won’t be able to afford to advertise.”

Facebook advertising pixels make it possible for you to follow up people who have visited specific pages on your website but the key thing is that it allows you to retarget and make targeted offers to individuals based on the pages they’ve visited.

Given that pixels can be confusing, this article outlines the types of pixels, how to use them and when.

Let’s start with the types of pixels…

There are two types of Facebook advertising pixels and they are Conversion Pixels and Website Custom Audience Pixel.

Conversion Pixel

Conversion pixel is a piece of code provided by Facebook to be placed on a specific web page so that when someone visits the page, it triggers retargeting.

It can be used for:

1. Tracking how many times an action occurs on a page.

With a tracking pixel, you can count how many people have visited a page. To create conversion pixels, click on Conversion Tracking on the left-hand side of your ad manager.

To create a pixel, click “Create Pixel” in the top right-hand corner. You will notice that there are categories to choose from.

2. Optimization because when setting up advertising campaigns Facebook asks what the objective of your campaign is.

Another benefit is that you can create a lookalike audience in the Conversion Tracking tab of your ads manager based on these pixels. These audiences are a perfect target to scale your ad campaign.

Lookalike audiences mean Facebook will create an audience of people who are most like the people who have taken that specific action.

That’s it, now you understand conversion pixels. Let’s move to…

Website Custom Audience Pixel

Website custom audiences are created for retargeting but the first thing you need to know is that you only have one website custom audience pixel per Facebook account.

So place it on the head template of your website so that it applies to all pages or you can manually add the code to each page. It’s up to you.

You can manage your Website custom audiences under the “Audiences” tab on the left-hand side of the ads manager.

Once you’ve installed the pixel, you can start creating retargeting audiences.

To do that, click “Create Audience”, then “Custom Audience”, then “Website Traffic” and you’ll see a box with tons of options.

You can create audiences of people who have visited your entire site, people who have visited specific URLs, and people who haven’t visited your site in a certain amount of time. It’s that awesome.

In conclusion

Website Custom Audiences require ONE pixel to be placed on your site and then custom audiences to be created for retargeting, while Conversion pixels are individually placed on different pages so that you can track and optimize.

As you can see, it’s almost impossible to run successful Facebook ads without using PIXELS. They’re essential for tracking, optimization, retargeting, and scaling of your campaigns.

There’s no denying that Facebook advertising pixels could be confusing but that’s our expertise, click here if you need our help.